Comments on: Monthly gleanings for January 2014http://blog.oup.com/2014/01/monthly-gleanings-for-january-2014/
Academic insights for the thinking world.Tue, 31 Mar 2015 16:11:15 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1By: Michael Lambhttp://blog.oup.com/2014/01/monthly-gleanings-for-january-2014/#comment-562269
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 23:49:08 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=59647#comment-562269Charles, indeed not, and we know some of the explanations for these things. So it may be that in the eternal darkness of English spelling that will apparently persist as long as black ink and its digital descendants do, giving life to nothing but tohu and bohu, we should be grateful even for suggestions for the lopping of the odd letter in e.g. hoarse, which after all rhymes with FORCE for those (a large minority — not including me, so no axe to grind) who do not have the NORTH-FORCE merger, which was probably so christened by JC Wells for the very good reason that calling it the horse-hoarse merger as you and others do would have suggested that it was necessarily a reflex of etymological antecedents, scribal quirks, or what have you, or indeed that it was anything other than a faithful reflection of synchronic dialectology. Perhaps even FORCE suggests that the -e has something to do with it, as it does in or-ore(=oar) for example. FORT would still have done the trick. But as I said before, oa in the context -r is pretty consistent for the closer o where it survives: besides hoar there is oar roar board coarse boar soar…

So perhaps it may come to the pass that the unmerged will have to console themselves with the reflection that for all the fuss Portuguese makes about marking the accented syllable with acute or til, the odd circumflex does scant justice to the two values of o or e, and that Italian only plays at marking it in final syllables. And right enough there are dialects which don’t preserve it.

Anatoly, will that do as an interim peace-offering? I hope you won’t mind if I get back to you with further comments on today’s piece.

]]>By: Charles Wellshttp://blog.oup.com/2014/01/monthly-gleanings-for-january-2014/#comment-562234
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 20:18:29 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=59647#comment-562234These two peculiarities of American dialect look similar to the horse-hoarse distinction: 1. In the Philadelphia area “sad” and “mad” do not rhyme. 2. For older natives of Atlanta (including me) “got” and “hot” do not rhyme. I can’t imagine how those distinctions arose. But my lack of imagination doesn’t mean there is not an explanation.
]]>By: Annie Morganhttp://blog.oup.com/2014/01/monthly-gleanings-for-january-2014/#comment-562189
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:04:40 +0000http://blog.oup.com/?p=59647#comment-562189Re: Plural they with a singular antecedent.

I shall stand, not behind you, but right at your side where this is concerned. Arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhh, I say, each time I come across such statements.